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Comment by dageshi | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone doing better than Google at self driving cars right now?

I agree with the other products you mentioned but it seems like nobody has "won" self driving cars yet but google might be the furthest along?

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Waymo is far in the lead. Best track record, transparent reporting, and actually on the road driving passengers around without a driver in the car.

I think Cruise is plausible competitor for them. Waymo and Cruise both would be tied for first, each with different aspects that seem to be ahead at the moment.

Yes, many cars with various levels of self-driving are available. Almost every car maker now has basic lane following and adaptive cruise control. Some add navigation, lane changing, and the ability to obey traffic signals. GM has a system called Super Cruise that allows the driver to take their hands off the wheel. Mercedes has Drive Pilot which is the first level 3 self driving system.

Google has not released anything.

Waymo is driving passengers around a real city without a driver in the car as a service. Automatically changing lanes is cute by comparison.

Google has taken the approach they have very deliberately. They believe in full self driving only. It's not that they couldn't do lane changing and autopilot. It's that they believed it was the wrong approach. No steering wheel, no dependence on a human driver is what they want.

Also they don't have a business selling cars that they can put it in as a desirable feature that is not the core value proposition.

Waymo has fully self-driving taxi services in various cities (no person in the front seat at all). Honestly they seem quite advanced compared to the competition.

> Waymo has fully self-driving taxi services in various cities

Only 2: Phoenix and SF.

+ LA https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/27/waymo-to-test-driverless-r...

I just took a 20 minute ride to the airport in a Waymo yesterday. They are operating in two locations in Arizona and expanding to San Francisco.

Do the cars drive at freeway speeds, 60 mph plus on the freeway? My impression was they don't go on roads with speeds that fast, they limit themselves to roads with speedsmaybe up to 40.

Driver assistance and fully autonomous driving are very different things.

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